What's the best format, and bit rate for music files?

Lossless format files are preferred. wma’s or m4a’s are lossless (meaning they do not cut off any frequencies to compress the files). FLAC and MPEG-4 are also lossless. High bitrate mp3’s or variable bitrate mp3’s are good if you want good sound but aren’t terribly worried about loosing any frequencies. Really though, I don’t think there’s much of a reason to keep using mp3’s anymore now that storage has become so cheap it’s not as important to compress audio so much.

You might like to check out this article on audio compression:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_compression_(data)

You’ll have to copy and paste the link due to Fluther’s formatting

Considering that the output of a phone’s headphone jack isn’t very high fidelity, 192kbps MP3’s will sound just fine. Maybe even 128kbps. You probably won’t be able to tell the difference if you use a higher bitrate.

Ah, I didn’t notice the details. If it’s an iPhone the audio playback has a range of 20Hz to 20,000Hz, which is pretty good if you ask me (basically the full human hearing range), so really there’s no reason to cut corners except for rapid file transfer and storage. In this case I might do some tests to see how long it takes to transfer different bitrate files and how much storage space they take. Generally if I have a choice of lossy compression I’ll pick something in the range of 192kbps to 320kbps.

I usually go with 256K VBR MP3. It is a good compromise between filesize and quality. If you use the shitty headphones that came with your phone it doesn’t matter.

@drdoombot Your right, if the speakers/headphones aren’t producing the Freqs, then your only going to hear so much. When i make my ring tones or load up my phone with music, there all 128…